


I have this theory about convergence

by anupturnedboat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 80's Movies, Best Friends, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Monsters, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:09:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anupturnedboat/pseuds/anupturnedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Con verge - intransitive verb<br/>Definition: 1: to tend or move toward one point or another: come together: converging paths 2: to come together and unite in a common interest or focus </p>
<p>Lydia Martin is sort of the perfect antidote to terrifying moments of existential crisis.</p>
<p>Post S4 Stiles and Lydia</p>
            </blockquote>





	I have this theory about convergence

He starts the summer numbering the ways his life has improved since the start of junior year. One. He’s not possessed by a creepy ass Japanese demon anymore and has actually made it to senior year. Two. He has a girlfriend, a real life, hanging out, kissing back girlfriend. Three. He will be first string this season. He’s sort of gotten better at Lacrosse, but also, most of the first string graduated, died or mysteriously disappeared. So-

He’s ticking off the things on the list over and over when he can’t sleep.

Which is most nights, and he’s kind of hoping the summer will just be over already, because it already sucks.

Scott’s dad got him a car. But that guy is an asshole and it totally came with strings attached, which means Scott drives up to Sacramento every Friday and doesn’t get back until late Monday. Then he’s either with Kira or Liam or both, and Stiles is seriously tired of sharing his best friend.

And having a girlfriend comes with a list of pro’s that are way longer than the cons, but Malia isn’t actually around for him to enjoy any of them. She’s with Derrick and Braden, in Nevada (or is it New Mexico?) trying to find her mom. He still isn’t sure if the plan is to kill her or something else. Whatever the case he hadn’t been invited, and it makes him hyper aware that he is dating a Hale – and they are seriously all alike.

He takes two aspirins to kill the monster headache he’s had for days now. He’s googled PTSD enough to know he has some symptoms, but being wound tight and shuttered up is not how he wants to spend the summer.

His dad is still working extra shifts at the station, and although he knows Lydia is hooking up with Deputy Parrish (which is wrong on so many levels), he texts her to see if she wants to hang out. It trips him up a little (in a good, but totally platonic way) when she immediately replies yes.

When she shows up in a pretty yellow skirt and a tank top, smelling of coconuts and pineapples, he is suddenly painfully aware of how pathetic he must look in rumpled clothes and the house bathed in semi-darkness.

She looks him over critically, but doesn’t say anything, which he’s really fucking grateful for. He doesn’t want to talk about it, or about the fact that everything, he eats, makes his stomach hurt, and how he dreams about Allison. A lot. Even more than after it happened. How sometimes, it’s not Allison, but Scott, or her, even Derrick. And it’s always _his_ hands covered in blood doing the killing.

“My mom’s dating this new guy,” she says tossing her purse onto his father’s easy chair. “And she doesn’t do the whole sock on the door thing. So, you’re going to have to entertain me.”

The thing about Lydia is that she rolls right over him, and it’s totally comforting and familiar.

She takes the remote and looks for something to watch, while he helplessly wonders why she is here in the dark with him when she should be doing whatever it is pretty girls do in the summer.

Half way through the Breakfast Club he figures it out, the darkness has touched her too. Not in all the same ways, but it is there behind the bright façade. And he wishes he had known that sooner.

Right around the time Judd Nelson is saying something about it being an imperfect world, he feels the tension in his shoulders start to give way. He has this indescribable desire to just push up close to her, to hold on tight because things fall apart so easily. And they’re just kids and all of this is just too much.

But he makes fists instead and tries to just breathe until the credits start to roll. If she notices that he is all kinds of messed up, she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she takes out her phone and opens the calendar.

It starts out as movie nights on Friday, sometimes extended to Saturdays if neither has anything else to do or if Lydia’s mom is hanging out with her special friend.

They decide to call it Everything Eighties, and because it’s them, it complicated and intricate and detailed and with a rating sheet.

Every Friday they each pick a movie. Any movie, as long as it hit theatres sometime between 1980 and 1989 (although they quickly agree to rule out anything where someone is possessed or conducts an exorcism, sacrificial ritual or is a ninja or a berserker). They’ve got a scorecard with columns titled overall theme, plausibility, test of time and best use of dialogue.

Stiles quickly learns that Lydia likes the ones were the asshole jock is really not, best. He thinks Jake Ryan is sort of a douche so he gives that movie an overall 5.

He likes the ones with dumb jokes and - hello raccoons! He gives that one a 10 in the test of time column, because it may have been made before he was born, but he it is pretty fucking funny. Even Lydia smirks a couple of times, catching him off-guard at the way his heart still does that hop skip thing around her.

When he thinks about it later, after she’s gone home, it hits him that it sort of feels like he’s been hibernating for a while and is just now starting to wake up. He’s fuzzy headed and his limbs are kind of tingly, but there is a spark of life in the darkness. “

You know Lea Thompson is not the bad guy, and they probably would have been really great together,” Lydia says scowling at Some Kind of Wonderful. “I mean I know she’s not the protagonist, so this isn’t her story, but she’s just trying to find herself like anyone else. And so what, her friends are jerks? It’s just high school and it doesn’t really matter as much as everyone thinks it does.”

The urge to kiss her shoots right through him, and he quickly tamps it down before she can see it on his face. He’s got a girlfriend, and she’s doing (he doesn’t even want to know what) with Jordan Parrish, who is like seven years older than them. And a cop. Which he is going to continue to try not to think about.

But really, he’s going to just ignore that stupid urge, and her pretty, pretty lips, because they are just friends. And being here like this is the highlight of his life right now, and if he messes it up by acting like a total adolescent douche he’s never going to forgive himself.

“Stiles?”

“Lydia, I don’t think they get things even half way right in the movies,” he says giving the movie a very high score, making sure he’s got his lap top turned away from her.

_9 -Theory of convergence_ she types into the dialogue column the next week. He gives the movie an overall 6, because that Lloyd Dobbler guy is totally doomed, a girl like that is nothing but heartbreak.

Monster Squad is his choice. The monsters are pretty cheesy and not scary at all from the clips he’s seen on Youtube, and he is really fucking fascinated by all the different kinds of werewolves Hollywood could come up with. Turns out they hardly ever got it even close to right.

Despite all that, it is kind of sobering that the kids in town are the only ones doing anything to keep shit safe. He’s about to type in the quotes section, not sure what kind of rating he’s going to give it when Lydia kicks his shin hard. She’s got that scary raised eyebrow thing going on and he just knows she knows what he was going to write.

“Why do you think it always the kids that have to deal with the killing of the monsters?” he blurts out, that headache roaring to life again.

She rolls over, and for a moment, all, he can think, is how pretty her hair looks fanned out on the floor like that. The monsters kind of drift right out of his mind and it occurs to him that Lydia Martin is sort of the perfect antidote to terrifying moments of existential crisis.

“Kids are adaptable,” she shrugs. “Kids can handle stuff that would blow a grown up’s mind.”

He swallows thickly. He still doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s still not ready, but if he were -

She stays late that night and they flip through a dozen channels, finally deciding on the history channel, something about the founding fathers. He almost asks her about Jordan Parrish but decides he really doesn’t want to know. They fall asleep on the couch and when he wakes up at five; her feet are tucked into the spot behind his knees.

“What are you doing here?” he asks softly, the next Friday.

She pauses, and her face goes hard. “Do you not want me here?”

He realizes how it must sound, and now it’s going to ruin the Neverending Story, which he has seen before, but was really curious about whether she’d like it or not.

“Lydia, of course, I do,” he backpedals. “It’s just, there have to be a million better ways for you to spend your summer.”

"I’m not hanging out with you out of pity if that is what you are thinking."

"It’s crossed my mind."

"Well, I’m not. Can we just watch the movie?"

“Then why-”

“Uggh, Stiles! Why do you have to always know everything?”

“So there’s something to know?”

“Why are you hanging out with _me?_ ” she counters "You have a girlfriend."

 “Who’s not exactly available,” he sighs miserably.

“So you're just using me as a stand in?” she says deceptively calm.

“Lydia-” he starts, but then stops, words floating right out of his brain. She has a way of being absolutely terrifying when she is furious.

“No really, am I just a placeholder until she gets back?”

“You’re the only thing that is keeping me sane right now,” he admits watching her, knowing he’s on the verge of fucking everything up. “I thought that I could just pick up and keep moving, but there are things in my head that aren’t right. The only thing that makes it better is this,” he confesses.

He watches her let the breath she has been holding out.

“Have you every considered that this is the same for me?” she says softly.

He shakes his head, because it isn’t the same. She’s better at this, better at existing in this messed up world “I know what you have been through can’t be easy , but -”

“This is the only place, you’re the only person I can be myself with,” she interrupts, forcing him to look at her. “This is the only place where I know I won’t be screaming or running or crying. So, can you just accept that? That I need you? That you are possibly the only person that actually knows me?"

He feels something in his chest squeeze hard, and then he takes a breath and he is lighter than he has been in a long time. His brain is scrambling for something to say. Something to reflect all the things she means to him, but all, he manages to get out, is; “Yeah, yeah I can do that.”

He ends the summer numbering the ways his life has changed in a few short weeks. One. That scar around his heart is finally less tender. Two. He’s forgiving himself and letting go. Three. He’s going to stop trying to get over Lydia Martin.


End file.
